Tag: Moon

Where is Artemis II Now?

The Artemis II mission is well underway. The Orion Capsule with its crew of four humans (unlike Artemis I which was crewed by four manikins) launched atop NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) last night and boy do I hope I have all of these terms correct. Oh well.

Did I see the launch? No. I live near Boston which means while the rocket was blasting its way toward the stars down in Florida I was stuck in stupidly awful traffic on route 128. You know, like you do.

Despite my traffic woes, Artemis II launched and made it into orbit. That leaves me with a new question. Where are they now? Turns out NASA kind of has an answer, thought the reality of it was a little underwhelming.

NASA’s Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW) let’s you track where the capsule and its four astronauts are at any given moment. Can you imagine how much internet traffic a page like that would have had back in July of 1969 when Apollo 11 was making its trip to the moon? Or at least how much internet traffic it would have seen if internet traffic actually existed. You know what I mean though. You’re pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down, right?

I’m somewhat underwhelmed by the site. At least so far. I don’t know if its the site itself or if its just getting slammed with visitors or what, but it is unbelievably slow for me right now and it took a really long time before I could do anything at all. Once it loaded though, it gave me some cool stats. Right now they are 35,553 miles from Earth, 235,997 miles from the Moon, and they are traveling at a brisk 3,841 miles per hour. May the rest of the world pardon my use of English units. We’re ass backwards Americans in these parts after all.

Check out the site and have fun keeping an eye on things as they travel to the moon, do a lap, and then come home safely. Space exploration is super freakin’ fun, even when the mission is just a test drive. Enjoy!

Welcome to the Moon

The Odysseus lander is on the moon! Nice job, everyone!

Granted, according to the article I just linked, there were issues. The system that was meant to determine if the lander was right side up or not failed and they had to improvise an alternative. It might have worked, but as of the posting of said article, they aren’t sure if the lander landed on it’s feet or fell over onto its side or what.

We’ll find out soon enough. Here’s hoping we get good news. Also, here’s hoping we get pictures. It’s been a long time since we’ve had new pictures from the moon. The last US lander was in 1972, but there have been others since then. Other countries have had more recent successes. I think India sent the last lander to land near the South pole. They were 600 kilometers away and this new one is shooting for about 300 kilometers away.

Pics or it didn’t happen, right?

Moon Landing: Imminent?

There is about to be an attempt to soft land a lunar lander onto the moon. 300 kilometers from the South pole. If it is successful it will be the first time a private company pulled it off, and it will also be the furthest South anything has landed. Given that there appears to be ice in a crater at the South pole, that’s pretty gigantic in its significance.

The lander was sent up by a company called Intuitive Machines and of course it will be timed to happen while I am stuck in traffic on this evening’s commute so I won’t be able to try and follow it live.

Here’s hoping that when I get home I will learn about the first USA based craft to soft land on the moon since the last Apollo mission back in 1972.

Fingers astronomically crossed.

Night Pics

I had to drive to Wilmington tonight to pick up a potential xmas present at a Target that may or may not be built on top of the location of a warehouse in which I spent the last year of my life before returning to college in 1997. The whole neighborhood is new, but I think my building is still there, just significantly remodeled, and the Target is actually next door.

I took my point and shoot along for the ride and took some awful, awful pics.

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On the way home I tried to take a pic of the city’s xmas tree but the light turned green and I ended up with this masterpiece.

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When I got home and got out of the car I saw that the moon looked awesome through the hazy clouds and I ran inside to put my best lens on my DSLR so I could take a pic. It ended up being an exposure compensation test that gave me four really awful, awful pictures.

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No exposure compensation. The trees are cool, the moon is not.
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Exposure compensation at -3. The moon looks awesome but everything else is non-existent.
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Exposure compensation at -2. Still too much.
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Exposure compensation at -1. Better, but maybe not enough. Somewhere between -1 and -2 should be the sweet spot.

Next I continued the exposure compensation olympics by aiming at the xmas lights on the roof.

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No exposure compensation.
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Exposure compensation at -1. Or was it -2? I think it was -1.

Isn’t this the most fascinating post ever? I knew you’d love it!

Where is Artemis 1 Right Now?

Yeah yeah yeah, I said I was going to stop using twitter, but sometimes I just want another app to format a link for me and CounterSocial isn’t working with WordPress.com yet so twitter it is.

Artemis Looks Back

Did you all wave when Artemis 1 took your picture?

Artemis 1

After a slew of delays NASA launched the Artemis 1 mission over night last night. It’s just a test, but it’s a step toward returning to the moon, folks! Let’s Freakin’ Gooooo!!!